The Lady and Her Monsters (11 page)

The process of alchemy was at the highest point during Mary Shelley's lifetime. Alchemists were not only trying to turn base metals into gold, but to find the key to immortality. As the illustration shows, it was not only scientists and alchemists who were involved in the practice, but monks secluded in their monasteries. For them, finding the key to immortality was not going against God; rather, it was a way to understand Him and His doings.

But while in Ingolstadt, Paracelsus was not able to bring someone back to life. Instead, during his days in the town, he did cause a paralyzed woman whose condition was said to be irreversible to walk again. No one knew how he did this, but some said it was brought about by his medicinal lotion called Azoth of the Red Lion. This “universal medicine” contained mercury, which even then was known to possess curative powers. There are accounts of the girl's rising from her bed and waltzing gleefully into the next room, where her parents sat reading.

P
aracelsus was not the only person to think of a man-made creature, nor was Mary Shelley the first to write about it. History, lore, and religion have numerous tales of mystical men who created beings large and small—either to help in times of trouble or simply because their physical labors had become too burdensome. Most of these belong to the Jewish tradition and involve a creature called a golem. It was in sixteenth-century Prague that the most renowned golem of all came into existence. It was there that Rabbi Loew removed some soil from the earth and made himself an assistant.

Rabbi Loew knew the city's Jewish population wanted help, but also that his own household needed assistance with the daily chores. As a rabbi, he was aware of the incantations required for golem-making. He didn't need putrid sperm or horse manure like Paracelsus. Rather, a lump of clay, long-forgotten prayers recited in a specific rotation, and the quiet whispering of God's secret name would do the trick. As such, Rabbi Loew and two of his relations dug out clay, which was then shaped into the form of a small man. They stretched out the clay figure on a large table situated in the middle of a room and took turns walking around it seven times, while rhythmically chanting their prayers and whispering to God. Soon, the clay creature began to glow from within, and as more prayers were uttered the creature grew in size. Eventually it opened its eyes and, startled by being brought to life, gazed at them, as if intent on pleasing them.

But as it continued to grow, Rabbi Loew was afraid to let it out of his sight. In addition to increasing in size, the golem also got smarter and smarter and learned to disobey orders, while also overstepping its boundaries. Not long thereafter, it was decided the creature should be returned to the clay. Three men straddled the golem and roped it tightly. Once again the people circled the golem, but this time they did so in the opposite direction, while again reciting prayers that would take away the life force they had given the creature. They also recalled the secret name of God. When this was done, the creature lost its life force and sank back onto itself.

The golem tales were common all over Europe. Jacob Grimm, half of the famous team the brothers Grimm, in his 1808 book
Journal for Hermits
wrote, “The Polish Jews, after having spoken certain prayers and observed certain Fast days, make the figure of a man out of clay or lime, which must come to life after they have pronounced the wonderworkings
Shem-ham—phorasheh
. This figure cannot speak, but it understands what one says and commands it to do. They call it Golem and use it as a servant to do all sorts of housework, only he may never leave the house. On his forehead the word
Aemaeth
(Truth, God) is written, but his weight increases from day to day, and he easily becomes taller and stronger than all the other members of the household, however small he might have been in the beginning. Becoming afraid of him, they therefore erase the first letter so that nothing remains but
Maeth
(he is dead), whereupon he collapses into clay.”

Given everything readers of
Frankenstein
knew about alchemy and creating a man, they were left to wonder how much Victor Frankenstein truly knew about man-making when he referred to Paracelsus and Simon Magus. And how much did Mary Shelley know about them when she referred to them? Where had she learned alchemy? It wasn't a matter of where she learned of them but of who had taught her. And that man was a young poet who entered her life early on and, as if she were much like alchemical clay, reshaped the direction of her days. He was Percy Bysshe Shelley.

I
n 1812 Percy Shelley wrote a letter to William Godwin in which he described not only his movements and current situations but also what he'd been reading. In the letter, he said he had read all of the books about Albertus Magnus and Paracelsus. This admission, which sounded suspiciously like the one Victor Frankenstein makes to his own father, began on a correspondence between Shelley and Godwin, which had developed some months earlier. Shelley had learned that the reformer was still alive and not dead, as he had come to believe, thus had quickly drafted a letter full of youthful enthusiasm, praise, and the proper dose of flattery. The letter worked its magic on Godwin; the reformer quickly replied.

Percy Shelley. This portrait was painted in Rome in 1819, by Amelia Curran. It is the most well-known portrait of the poet, and Mary Shelley went to great lengths to get it from the artist following Percy Shelley's death. Luckily for Mary Shelley, Amelia Curran still had it in her possession—believing it was not a good likeness of the poet, Curran was about to burn it when word from Mary Shelley reached her.

Godwin was used to receiving letters like this from young men who had been inspired by his writing and wanted confirmation they were pursuing the right approach themselves. In 1803, he had received such a letter from a young man named H. Chatterton. Only twenty-one years old, Chatterton's words were oddly similar to ones Mary Shelley would write years later, and they also echo the ones Victor Frankenstein mutters on pages printed over a decade later.

Chatterton wrote:

From my boyish days I was propelled of a sentiment . . . that I was born to promote the diffusion of knowledge. It were absurd to prove to you how much the increase of happiness depends on the progress of myth, and truth on the invention of the adoption of a philosophical knowledge. I have long had this object in view. But what an immense field of science must a man travel . . . It were useless, as well as ostentatious to describe my exertions & especially as their effect in knowledge seems disproportionally small . . . It was only by the faint glimmer of my midnight lamp, in solitude and science, that I could recover my mind from my agitation in which the scenes of the day had thrown it; and that my worn imagination permitted a virtuous and rational state of society inflicted in some measure my own exertions.

There are no indications that Godwin replied to this letter—though he eagerly replied to the one from Shelley.

S
helley's enthusiasm for life's more unorthodox subjects had always been contagious, going so far as to engulf those that surrounded him. In some respects, these enthusiasms caused him to be expelled from Oxford University not long before he came to know William Godwin.

Most of what is known of the six months Shelley spent at Oxford comes from Thomas Jefferson Hogg, a young man he met and befriended soon after he arrived. Though Hogg is believed to have been bright in his own right, and in later life became a lawyer, he is best known for his association with Percy Shelley. He tried to make the most of that friendship, particularly with his book
Shelley at Oxford,
in which he anointed himself the expert on Shelley's schoolboy days.

The book stresses many of the characteristics most people associate with Shelley, especially the beautiful physical traits that seem to elevate the poet from the mere mortal to the angelic.

The initial meeting occurred one evening during the school's scheduled meal. As Hogg sat at his assigned table, he realized he had been joined by a young freshman who was so tall and gawky he gave off an aura of fragility. He wore expensive clothes, though he seemed not to mind them, and there was a gentility about him, though “his gestures were abrupt, and sometimes violent.” His long hair crowned a face that was pale, small, and delicate like a girl's. He ran his hands through his hair regularly yet unconsciously. Hogg was captivated and could not help but stare at the young man who had entered his life.

During their initial conversation, Hogg learned that Shelley had a peculiar fascination with science and chemistry, most especially electricity. “What a mighty instrument would electricity be in the hands of him who knew how to wield it, in what manner to direct its omnipotent energies, and we may command an indefinite quality of the fluid,” Shelley cried out to a stunned Hogg.

Shelley also spoke about the powers of thunder and lightning, and of the possibilities for man should he be able to “guide it.” Shelley was enthralled by overpowering nature: “How many secrets of nature would such stupendous force unlock,” he said.

He invited Hogg to continue this one-sided conversation in his rooms, not only so that he could expand on his scientific ideas, but also so he could show off one of his most prized possessions: a galvanic battery.

At Eton a few years earlier, he had refused to take part in sports and the same studies as his peers. Instead spent his time on “strange studies,” inundating those who would hear him with stories of “fairy land, and apparitions, and spirits, and haunted grounds.” He launched fire balloons toward the sky and barricaded himself in his room reading texts on chemistry and demonology. His room often smelled of “strange and fiery liquids” that he kept bubbling on the tables. He also started to experiment on himself with a small galvanic battery he had purchased before entering the institution. These experiments occurred in the middle of the night, while the rest of his classmates slept. Though Shelley left behind few notes about these experiments, his tutor, a Mr. Bethell, who had once been subjected to the effects of the battery, kept an account of what happened.

As Edward Dowden, who researched and wrote a detailed book about Shelley and his scientific pursuits, and T. J. Hogg reported, while on a nightly round Mr. Bethell heard peculiar noises coming from behind Shelley's locked doors. Curious, he became convinced that Shelley was engaging in “nefarious scientific pursuits,” which of course he intended to put a halt to. He marched into the room, where Shelley was engulfed in a leaping “blue-flame.” Stunned, Bethell asked what he was doing, and Shelley replied, “I am raising the devil.”

On hearing this, the tutor approached the galvanic battery and placed his hands above it. He received a nasty electrical discharge that sent him flying across the room. What little bond existed between tutor and pupil was seriously frayed that night.

A
lthough Giovanni Aldini had previously performed the most comprehensive galvanic experiment on a human corpse in London, the introduction of galvanic electricity to an English audience had occurred earlier, by the so-called medico-electrician Tiberius Cavallo. It was Cavallo who had brought the work of Galvani to the forefront in England, in 1793, when he read two extended and detailed letters he had received from none other than Alessandro Volta, who was detailing Galvani's experiments on frogs. Cavallo also read those letters at the Royal Society, making them available to scientists in the not-so-distant future.

Since the late 1770s, Cavallo had been dabbling with electricity on a medicinal level, even constructing those instruments he needed for his purposes. This had made him one of the most sought-after and famous natural philosophers in all of London. Aside from his own abilities as an inventor and medical therapist, he was also an excellent letter writer, a trait that led him to begin and keep up friendships and professional correspondences with a wide variety of people across Europe and beyond, people who kept him abreast of the latest inventions and innovations in the fields. One person he corresponded with was Dr. James Lind of Windsor, who would later become one of Percy Shelley's mentors at Eton.